He still wasn't leaving his home unless it was work or getting groceries, but he was eating better. He held his head as he stared at his plate. He made some simple scrambled eggs and sausages. It tasted fine.

He promised himself that he would try. He forced himself to finish the plate in its entirety and walked over to his computer desk. He was going to do the same dance where he would switch back between his phone and monitor. He made sure to open his blinds to let in the summer sun.

Then he remembered that he agreed to meet with Melody to grind some more mobs. He clicked on the shortcut on his desktop and typed in his information. His character stared at him in some infinite void part of the Marquis server. The character that shared his first name. He was real original on that one. Esprit was cool though. He was also satisfied with how he created his character. It was just a fantasy version of himself with white hair and green eyes instead of brown, but it was good enough for him.

***

"Humans are so boring,' a random player shouted as he passed by. The player was a Makana. The robot bloodline that allowed a player to create their own bipedal magic robot. Gray stared as this random hater just walked outside of the Willowtown's safe bounds. The insult was made worse because the player did look rad. Admittedly, it was hard to be a robot and not look rad.

Gray was sitting on a bench near the blacksmith. He waited for Melody to hop on, so they could progress. They would continue their adventures together for a week and had reached level 15. While the leveling process was long, they were able to journey across many areas of Erlin. He saw Melody appear in the center of Willowtown.

"I have a plan for today," Melody smiled.

"Is it killing more mobs?"

"Well yes, but. It will also involve us getting a house."

"Oh, like player housing?"

"Close again," Melody walked out towards Willowtown's northern exit. "We're gonna get a guild house!"

"How do you do that?" Gray asked.

"Well now that we're level 15, we just need to go to Alitz, and we just sign up."

"Sounds easy. Then let's get going."

Gray and Melody walked from Willowtown to Alitz. Neither of them had done the quest to acquire a mount, so they had to walk to Alitz. Alitz was a great city in the land that had large stone walls. The city was bustling with NPCs and players alike.

Within the city was divided by large boulevards that circled around. One was the Goldring District where players could auction their items on a player market. Another was called Vocation Road. This is where players could train their non-combat classes such as fishing or cooking. A white cathedral marked the center of the city, and this was where most players stayed. This place was aptly called Talik's Garden.

There were teleportation stones across to the city for easy access. Melody and Gray spent around fifteen minutes running around the streets and jumping over fences to interact with them all.

After getting them all, Gray and Melody refocused on registering their guild. They used a teleportation stone to return to Talik's Garden.

Talik's Garden was a plaza with NPCs staffed along the sides for all manner of roles. The plaza was cut in half by a river. Along the sides of the rivers, there were plots of white-colored flowers called Suneyes. They found a crowd of players in this plaza. Bards were playing music on benches and under the shades of trees. Players were exchanging materials for new loot at NPCs vendors. Some players took off their gear and jumped into the river.

Melody crossed a stone bridge and approached a counter that had five NPCs lined up for different purposes. Players were crowded around these poor NPCs. Some players even had to resort to jumping on top or over the counter to properly interact with them. Melody was one of these players. She hopped on the counter and interacted with the calyx NPC named Summer, the guildbroker.

Calyxes were a plant bloodline that had barklike skin and had flowers for hair. Players could attribute to them a season which would change their skin color and features.

"I didn't even think about a name," Melody said,

"Oh, a name for a guild," Gray said. A fox girl with boulders glued to her hands as weapons pushed past Gray. Such was the joy of the monk class.

"I'm not really good with names...." Melody clicked her tongue.

Gray thought back to guild names that he had seen over the years. There were three schools of thought that he was aware of. The first was to come up with a comedic name. His old guild name was Pizza Party. The second was to make it a reference. Bonus points if it was a reference to other MMO-related media. The last was to make it a real name.

***

When he was at his worst, he would watch the sun rise. He sits on his bed, as the yellow band on the horizon rose and light could carve through skyscrapers. Another night. Another day.

***

"Daybreak," Gray said. "Kinda like dawn."

"Ooh. I like that. That's why you're the second in command," Melody provided the name of their guild.

"It might not be available..." Gray watched as below Melody's name, the phrase appeared.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"You worry too much," Melody waved her hand. "I had to make the initials DB instead of Day like I wanted, but we now have a guild. Now one guild house, please. Wha-"

"Do you have to pay?"

"Yeah..."

"Is it a lot?"

"Yeah... It's 1500 thousand Gold. GOLD! Not silver or copper."

"Oh boy, gold in this economy."

"Exactly. Now run them pockets," Melody ran up to Gray and stuck her hands out to initiate trading.

"I got a 100. How about you?"

"110. Damn, that means we're missing 1,290 gold. It's over man." Melody fell to her knees.

"Alright, alright. We can just find a couple of guides that'll give us tips for making money."

"Right. Yeah. Good idea."

So they booted up some guides and found some advice that was thrown across forum pages and videos. They ended up finding a channel by the name of Cendrillon Gaming. A pleasant voice sang as they began the video.

Howdy darlings, here's another guide for Erlin Online. This one is all about gold making and luckily there are many ways of making money available to players. The first method that is available to all players is farming mobs. Mob materials can be auctioned off to players that have vocations and are too lazy to gather them.

Level lower mob materials work because crafting in Elrin has two paths. The first path is to create an item with the listed materials. However, crafters can also upgrade a lower level item step by step. This process takes longer, but costs less materials. For example, a level 1 bronze hatchet can be upgraded into a level 5 iron axe with the use of 3 iron nuggets. Or a crafter may choose to craft the iron axe directly for the cost 5 iron nuggets and 3 ash branches....

Melody and Gray went to a level 15 area called the Lazarus Desert. Under golden sun and a glittering field of sand, Melody started to grab aggro on several mobs called Ironbloods. They were a bunch of sentient boulders with little feet and arms.

"Um, Melody?" Gray asked. "I think that's good enough,"

"Hmm?" Melody kept using the ability of Talik's javelin to get the aggro of mobs. At this point, she had 10 ironbloods scampering towards her. Melody was determined to get the attention of more. She threw her holy javelin at three more ironbloods.

"We need to farm these guys, Gray. That means we need to get the attention of as many as possible."

"We don't have a healer or a dps to help deal with these mobs. Supports deal least amount of damage among the four roles."

"I'm a tank, I can handle a couple of teeny-tiny boulders with T-Rex arms. Your meadow and my healing aura ability will keep us alive," Melody brought her shield and finally stopped pulling mobs. She had twenty ironbloods running towards her.

Gray had no faith, but he didn't say anything. She smiled and glowed with a yellow aura that mended wounds. Gray cast Meadow below her feet and began to cast lightning sphere. Lightning sphere was a level 15 aoe damage spell. Then the twenty ironbloods crowded around Melody and she was dead instantly.

Seeing his valiant tank go into the afterlife, Gray ran away. As ironbloods chased after him. A makhana and an oni duo looked on from a nearby hill.

Once Gray was dead, the duo passed by and resurrected them. Gray and Melody looked at each other.

"...Want to join our guild?" Gray asked. The passing duo just shook their heads as they left. "It was worth a shot."

***

Now if grinding mobs is a little too mind-numbing or slow for you solo players then the next option is geting a vocation.

***

Melody cast a line into the river that was present in Talik's Garden. Gray was behind her creating an entire desk with bubbling beakers. He was armed with a mortar and pestle as he grinded up the herbs that they picked outside of Alitza.

Melody caught a carp and three basses by the time Gray finished making a health potion I. Vocation class had their own leveling, so Melody started as a level 1 Fisher and Gray started as level 1 Alchemist.

"Oh yeah, this is it. Erlin Online, a world of fantasy and dungeons and crazy bosses that are filled with intricate mechanics. Now go fish and grind up some herbs," Gray joked.

"Haha, yeah. It's chill though," Melody caught another carp. "Hey Gray?"

"Yeah," Gray finished his second health potion and reached level 2 as an Alchemist.

"What do you do in real life?"

"Like my job?"

"Yeah. If you have one, I mean I know a lot of college kids like to play MMOs."

"No, I have a job and my own place. I work a pretty boring office job. I handle communication between different teams and look at spreadsheets. That kinda thing."

"Cool. Yeah, I'm a software engineer."

"Really? I would say that's a pretty cool job."

"The money's good for sure, but it's pretty dry as well. My coworkers are cool though. They have unique hobbies like card games or DND, stuff like that."

"Right, right," Gray made a mistake in his crafting process. It went unnoticed until the potion on his alchemist table started to bubble. There was a puff of smoke and the potion died down.

"Got distracted?"

"Yup, but it's alright. Let's see if we can get that guild house by the end of today."

"Right! I can't wait to get it. I heard the housing in this game is really in depth. Like you can snap together different pieces of house to basically make your own."

So Gray and Melody continued their crafting and gathering adventure in the middle of Talik's Garden. Afterwards they went to the Goldring District to sell their fish and potions. After waiting enough time, they finally got enough gold to buy the guild house. They packed their wealth together and went over to the ever-powerful Summer.

They paid the fee and got the tutorial to enter the instance to their new home. Melody and Gray appeared in the plot of land where their guild house would be. Waiting for them was an empty plot of land. While the plot of land looked nearly infinite, there was an invisible wall that stopped a player from going further.

As co-founders the two of them could alter several aspects such as the weather, the landscape in the distance, and the time of day. All these changes were free, but some were locked out as they were rewards for some other piece of content.

The structures, however, cost in-game currency.

"100 gold for a single archway," Melody shouted. "A million gold for a fountain. This stuff is expensive as fuck."

"There's cheaper stuff..." Gray put down a simple campfire in the center of the plot of land and he changed the time of day to nighttime. The blue sky turned into a gentle night sky with a field of stars in the sky and the 13 moons of Elrin above.

Gray lit the campfire and sat down next to it. Melody shrugged and did the same.

"I kinda like starting fresh like this. It's gonna cost a lot of gold, but the idea of slowly building our house out is cool."

"Yeah, fitting for a couple of low levels like us. I still would like at least a cabin..." Melody mumbled.

"We'll consider today. A success. We established a guild and bought our plot of land. We'll be getting money by doing other content as well."

"Actually, I never asked. Gray, is this your first MMO?"

"No, I used to play Balazar Online with a few friends. That was a while ago. I think it's been like 3 years."

"This is my first MMO."

"Really? You seemed so energetic, and you even came up with today's plan. I thought you might have played one before."

"Nah, this is my first. I always saw my sister play and I always thought it was exciting. I always wanted to try one because it seemed like there was so much to do."

"Alright then, as you're second in command I'll do my best to use some of my old experience."

"Appreciate you,"

The two of them chatted around the campfire for some time before Melody decided to log off for the day. Her character disappeared.

Alone, Gray sat next to the fire. He listened to the sounds of the winds. He didn't want to leave. What would he return to? Return to his GECKO II room where everything was a texture less wall. Or his apartment to count down the hours until the sun would rise, and he would start the work week? No, he would stay. He would make sure that the Daybreak Guild would have a home.